The American Academic Cass R. Sunstein has an interesting argument in his book Republic.com.2.0 Revenge of the Blogs, that the abundance of information, choice, and social networking available on the internet ultimately leads to a more restricted closed culture. For a well functioning system of free expression, Sunstein argues, there are certain requirements that go […]
Most of the drama of this year’s World Cup in South Africa seems to be taking place off the pitch (thanks to the likes of John Terry, Raymond Domenech, and Nicolas Anelka), but that just serves to point out what Catalan novelist Manuel Vazquez Montalban (creator of the excellent Pepe Carvallho detective novels) put his finger […]
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Frank O’Connor, one of the masters of the form, was repeatedly asked what differentiated a short story from a novel or novella, and over the course of his career he come up with some interesting answers. For example, interviewed by the Paris Review he suggested that one of the crucial dividing lines was not length, […]
Tags: chuck palahniuk
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How do you choose what writers to read? Or more specifically, how do you choose from those writers that you know you’re ‘supposed’ to read? The dead and dusty ones from the canon. I take shortcuts, which is probably the reason why Cervantes has never darkened my door. Short stories have many virtues, but they’re […]
Tags: short stories
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One of the ideas behind setting up ‘Is there a book in this blog?’ was to create a space where contributors could jump right in and make off-the-cuff observations about books/writers without the need to build up a structured review piece (there are plenty of those elsewhere in Three Monkeys Online). With that spirit in […]
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‘You couldn’t make it up’, screams the tabloid tv presenter as he recounts the surreal situation of Santa Claus and his helper elves being threatened by angry families in a run-down amusement park in the cultural wilderness of Kent. Far more entertaining, though starting from a similar run-down amusement park premise, is George Saunders brilliant […]
Tags: american authors, short stories
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Sarah Loud,head of digital publishing at Pan Macmillan, has published a much talked about Publisher’s manifesto for the 21st Century over at The Digatilist. It’s a long piece, and well worth reading. It starts with a fairly common position, that in this social-media/internet/mobile entertainment world the days of the book are numbered. “More and […]
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Sad news was reported on Friday, that American writer David Foster Wallace has apparently comitted suicide, at the age of 46. TMO’s very own Shane Barry wrote two perceptive pieces on DFW back in January 2006 (link), approaching the American writer’s work with caution through his collection of stories Oblivion. We reprint the second piece […]
Tags: american authors, david foster wallace
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Never judge a book by its cover. Sage advice, but what about its title? I approached Jonathan Lethem’s slim short-story collection Men and Cartoons less than enthusiastically, resigned to reading it because it was a) a gift, and b) short. The problem? The title, plus the promise that more than one story would concern itself with superherose, […]
Tags: american authors, short stories
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